It is currently customary to inoculate poultry with serum for fowl pox by having one person hold a chicken while another person injects the serum by passing a needle, or pair of needles, coated with the serum through the web of a wing. Efforts have been made to improve the reliability of this procedure, and to reduce the time and manpower required, as shown, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 2,952,257 of Sep. 13, 1960 (Rubery). The patent discloses a foot pedal operable to plunge a needle downwardly through the web of a wing into a bottle of serum, where some of the serum adheres to the side of the needle, and then to pull the needle upwardly in order to deposit some of the adhering serum. This makes it possible for one person to hold and inoculate a bird, but the disclosed apparatus has some problems. For example, the operator cannot see the part of the needle extending beneath the web, and consequently is ignorant of whether the needle may have gone through a feather beneath the web so that the serum picked up from the supply below will be wiped off by the feather before it reaches the web. For whatever reason, the Rubery apparatus has not displaced hand held needles for inoculating poultry.